For when sane just isn’t good enough

Windows games removed from work computers

At the Child Support Enforcement Department in Helena, Montana, USA, all the Windows games (you know the ones: Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts, and FreeCell) were removed from the computers (just like at a certain company we all know and love so much).

“If state employees have time to play computer games, then there are too many state employees.”

My question is, do you think an employee is entitled to spend their lunch break relaxing with a nice game of minesweeper? Or, as is said in the article:

“If state employees are playing computer games during their lunch hours, [they’re] encouraged instead to take a break and leave computers.”

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5 Responses

I don’t agree with the first statement because an employee playing a game during their lunch hour cannot be classified as an unproductive employee. However if the motive is to encourage employees to ‘take a break and leave computers’ then I fully support this move. I think they should give employees alternative suggestions for what to do during their lunch hour or maybe set up rooms where they can have their lunches with their colleagues, socialise and generally recharge their batteries for the afternoon.

Doubtful. There’s no problem with actually uninstalling the games; Microsoft’s Add/Remove programs even provides a way of doing this. Where you’d have serious problems is if you tried to alter the actual code of the operating system. Simply removing components? Not a problem at all. Unless you can find offical Microsoft documentation saying that you can’t uninstall the games, of course! I’m going to lay a wager, however, that you won’t find any such documentation.